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Aviation History
1937
1937 - 0966.PDF
3^2 FLIGHT. APRIL 15, 1937. TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND AFRICAN MILES A Pilot's Recollections of an Out-of-the-ordinary Tour By D. W. LUCRE IT was with certain misgivings that, some little time back, I received orders to fly a De Havilland Rapide on a tour which, as the accompanying map shows, included practically the whole African continent bar Portuguese East and West Africa and Abyssinia. I trusted implicitly in the machine as far as reliability was concerned, but from previous experience knew of the difficulties which such a trip involves in the matter of taking off at altitude or in high temperatures. The machine had to carry pilot, ground engineer, one passen ger and an enormous collection of luggage and spares, as well as being fitted with auxiliary fuel tanks. Inspection of the Ethyl Export Corporation's African organisation, and a survey of the fuel market, were the objects of the tour. Once outside England the weather was perfect, and, in fact, we were able to see the snow-covered peak of Mont Blanc from the vicinity of Lyons aerodrome. We touched down for fuel at Marseilles, and that night finished up in Barcelona. Very pleased with ourselves for covering reasonable mileage on the first day, after a late start, we planned to do some business in Barcelona on the second and reach Lisbon the same night. However, the aero dromes at both Madrid and Lisbon turned out to be com pletely flooded, so we stayed where we were, sending our passenger on by train to Lisbon. There he found a CAPE TOWN Slijabeth regiment of soldiers rescuing Crilly Airways' inaugural machine from the morass in which it had firmly stuck on landing that very day. Our next stage took us over rather bare mountainous country to Casablanca in French Morocco, where we were very well looked after by hospitable members of the Aero The comprehensive nature of the flight is apparent from this sketch map. Club du Maroc, many of whom knew the late Tom Campbell Black and his widow. So far the navigation had been easy, as we were flying over civilised country, but the next stage, to Cape Juby on the Rio del Oro, was prac tically devoid of landmarks, and we were very grateful tc have a coastline to follow. Not so long ago this stretch was forbidden to private pilots, but nowadays the natives are kept in order by the Spanish Air Force, which enter tained us royally at Cape Juby. We were almost sorry to leave this very sandy station and make across the water to the Canary Islands that evening. On our return to the mainland we made for Cairo, a long flight which has often been very ably described before. Sufficient to say that between Tripoli and Alexandria there is precious little to look at, as one flies high to escape the bumps, but that a landing is always interesting. We were able to pick up a cavalry officer at Solium and -give him a lift to Cairo—it saved him over two days and a filthy journey by ground transport. After leaving Khartoum one begins to sit up and take notice. There is the chance of seeing game, including elephant, and, flying low for hundreds of miles at a time, we were rewarded by seeing two quite large herds of the latter in the swampy Sudd district. I tried to take photo graphs, but with very little success, due to the bumps. I'1 this country one has to fly for miles on a compass course, with no landmarks. The visibility, however, is extremely good. At Juba there is a very good landmark in the shape of a hill, and, later, there is Lake Victoria, which one can hardly miss. From Nairobi we took oft at dawn, because, among oth-'r
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